Things weren’t looking great for Mildred Crest. Traumatised by the revelation that her fiancé had cancelled their engagement due to his massive gambling debts, she heads west, meeting Fern Driscoll along the way. Fern gives her a lift, but when the car crashes and Fern is killed, Mildred sees an opportunity – take on Fern’s identity. The bag containing four thousand dollars in cash probably helped matters too.

But things aren’t as straightforward – that’s definitely not the right word – as that. Soon, an insurance investigator pays a visit and sees a potential target for blackmail. He pays a second visit, and gets stabbed by an ice pick for his trouble. When Perry Mason, engaged by Mildred/Fay, pays the blackmailer a visit, he summons a doctor to check the severity of the wound, but the doctor arrives too late. It seems an open and shut case – Mildred killed him by stabbing him with an ice pick. But Perry Mason has other ideas about her guilt…

Perry Mason books have been slowly piling up on my bookshelf. They’re pretty easy to get second hand and there are so many of them, it’s hard to know which ones are good and which ones are less so. I really enjoyed The Case Of The Baited Hook and The Case Of The Careless Kitten, but was less impressed with The Case Of The Shoplifter’s Shoe, but I was after a quick read to round out April and spotted this one on my shelf. At the very least I could make fun of the phrase “Foot-loose Doll”.

Well, I would, except it isn’t used in the text and I’m sure it’s supposed to refer to Mildred but not sure in what way she’s “foot-loose” – or a “doll” for that matter. Yes, she makes a couple of stupid decisions to get her into this mess, but other than that, she seems quite smart.

All in all, this is a really fun read, and all the way through, I didn’t know which way it was going. Were we going to see Perry get Mildred off the murder charge through shenanigans, or was there another truth to be revealed? I’m not saying what, but the final chapters I found very satisfying. Yes, there’s more than one massive coincidence involved, but I thought it worked really well.

I’ve no idea where this ranks in the canon – chronologically, it’s about 2/3 through, book 56 out of 82, if Wikipedia has got the order right – but I really enjoyed this one. A lot of fun.